League of Legends received some of the weirdest balance we’ve seen in the game’s history in its latest patches. Riot Games didn’t want to improve the power of several of the characters that received changes in the last updates – the intention was simply to increase their performance with unusual builds, to allow them to appear in other roles and make them more fun to play. It is commendable, because the game needs moments when the competition takes a back seat. However, the project fell apart far too quickly.
A great attempt by Riot Games, but with poor results
To illustrate these changes, just take the case of Blitzcrank. A Riot Games employee, nicknamed “GreaterBelugaWhale” (we swear that’s his name), was absolutely right when a member of the community, after seeing the changes in patch 12.19, said: “These tweaks aim to turn a totally troll champion with a 30% win rate into a bad character who wins 45% of their games”. If that had been the case, that certainly wouldn’t have been a bad thing. However, since the changes came in, Blitzcrank has become the best character in the game.
It’s been over three weeks since Riot Games introduced the jungle and solo lane Blitzcrank upgrades. Thanks to these adjustments, the character was chosen as a jungler in 2.7% of ranked games, and won 47% of them. In exchange for this small advantage, he became the fourth most banned champion in the game, being feared even in the highest ranks after maintaining a win rate of around 54.9% in the last 14 days (in taking into account the parts in patches 12.19 and 12.20).
Doing the math, it’s impossible to see how this benefits the game. bad results. It’s also not fair to allow certain champions into a certain position and then kick them out when they become a problem.. It’s something we’ve seen before in League of Legends history with Rumble or Morgana. Riot Games encouraged the presence of these two champions in the jungle to finally kill them “kill” so that they would never be viable in this position again.
Something similar happened with Akshan. The champion was well-balanced, with a 50% win rate in the middle ranks of the game, which increased as one climbed the ranks. However, Riot Games has introduced an update to make his E (Heroic Soar) duration unlimited. This has resulted in new bugs, and while at first it looked like it would only result in little useful strategies, the champion can now solo the dragon in just half a minute.
The intent of Riot Games’ changes is to be applauded, as we’re the first to go to normal games and purchase a Soulstealer from Mejai on Tahm Kench, who received buffs in patch 12.19 with no impact to classified parts. Howeverit is important that the developer knows the limits and is clear that the balance of League of Legends should not be compromised just to allow a few players to troll a little in normal game.
The soap opera kept us spellbound for many, many weeks… But we finally know the end of the story and it makes us sad. Karmine Corp won’t be in the LEC next year, but I promise, KC’s future in League of Legends remains bright.